4.5 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

All of my life I have known four seasons spring, summer, autumn and winter. as the world turns on each of the solstices and equinoxes each season brings certain delights. Over my life, these have been In recent years with the coming catastrophe that is climate change, it feels like we have been reduced to two seasons: warm wet winters and cool wet summers. Unseasonal weather throughs people too; another effect of climate change, wearing a T-shirt in November on a hot day or suffering the inclement weather as the summer holidays start is becoming more and more common.

It wasn’t until I saw this book that it had even crossed my mind that there would be more than four seasons, but different parts of the world actually have different seasons that we do here in the Northern hemisphere. Japan though is unique in having 72 seasons. They are called micro seasons and they only last four or five days each. The system is, as you would expect from the Japanese, incredibly detailed and deeply rooted in their culture. For example, the micro season of Pure and Clear is between the 5th and 9th of April and it is when the swallows return in the spring there.

Parikian has taken these micro seasons and sees how they fit our seasons and place on the globe. Each chapter has what the micro season is in Japanese and the translations and for each small period, he heads out onto his local streets to discover what is happening on his local patch and to make notes about it. This is during the time of lockdown so he is only allowed out for the permitted hour to see what he can see in that brief period of time.

Even that restricted time and locale gives him plenty of opportunities to spot all manner of animals, plants, lichens and especially birds. It seems by having that dramatically restricted time available has sharpened his senses to what is around. The local graveyard is a favourite spot, the absence of traffic brings extra peace to his walks there. His observations are full of wonder for even the most mundane of creatures, the joy at seeing a blue tit for the first time after having to isolate kind of sums him up. It is laced with humour, the description of a squirrel running across a branch is hilarious, but there is also a fury to his writing as he has the time to consider the perilous state of our wildlife in this country.

This is another cracker of a book by Parikian. Following on from Into the Tangled Bank, this is another book that is very much set in his locale. The plan had been to write the book set in various locations around the country, but I think that it is a richer experience because of the limits placed on him. Liked his other books, this made me laugh a lot which I am not sure natural history books are supposed to do… It is also a reminder that the natural world is all around us. You don’t need to chase after the rarities, you can have as much joy in looking at a squirrel trying to get at a bird feeder as you can listening to a hedge full of sparrows fall silent as you approach and then start up again as you pass. Very much worth reading.

4 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Charles Nicholl wants to experience a little of the world so in 1986 he heads to Thailand to take in some of the sights and to learn about the spiritual traditions of forest Buddhism. He was heading to the north of the country to a place called Chiang Mai to visit a temple but the train he was on has just pulled into the Lop Buri. There is much excitement with vendors selling everything from smoked fish to iced drinks in plastic bags.

When the train gets moving again, he heads down the carriages to see if he could find the tall Caucasian guy who had boarded. He was an American and they get talking and it was in this conversation that he heard about Harry. It wasn’t long after that he met him, a slight seedy but formal man with swept-back black hair and an accent that he couldn’t quite place. He recommended a place for Nicholls to stay and they all went back to their carriages

It wouldn’t be long before they were to meet again and as they talked, Nicholl realised that the aim of finding spiritual solace in the temples of Thailand was looking less appealing than the thought of travelling along the banks of the Mekong and into the Golden Triangle and maybe even Burma. It would be a journey that would take him to some of the sordid bars of Bangkok with a German businessman, to partake in the pleasures and pain of opium and to spend far too long in the company of Harry’s girlfriend, Kitai.

I really liked this book, mostly because it doesn’t conform to what you would find elsewhere with travel writing. There is not much detail about the places that he is passing through, but he manages to convey the atmosphere in very few words. Rather this is a people-centred travel experience and what does come across is that he is sometimes out of his depth, not because he is getting himself in trouble, rather Harry is playing a very different game on the fringes of society there. Even though he has a certain amount of naivety in his travels, he is open-minded enough to know that this is an experience that he might never have happened if it wasn’t for the chance meeting on that train. The book is full of the wonder that he sees in the people and places they end up in.

3 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

These eight stories have been translated from Catalan into English for the first time. They were originally written in the early 1970s when Spain will still in the shadow of fascism and Franco.

The collection opens with a woman in the hospital who wakes up every morning wondering if it is going to be her last. She hears the laboured breathing of the woman next to her and knows as the screens are pulled over that then it will become a death rattle soon enough. The second story, Love and Ashes, is about a husband and wife who make the decision to travel to Africa so he can see the reticulated giraffes.

On the island, I walked up to the sea and begged it to tell me its secret. But the sea would only answer to the wind.

Other stories concern the inhabitants of a graveyard, a censor who stopped the public from reading the erotic stories in books but had a number of flaws of his own. Another story concerns a child who knew by the shoes his mother was wearing, who she had been with and what her mood was going to be like. She tried to hide him when they were conscripting seventeen-year-olds, but they found him soon enough.  He had almost no training before being dispatched for war.

I thought that this was a reasonable set of short stories. Roig prose, whilst politically charged, does not lose its sensitivity. There is plenty of variety in each story, they feel dystopian without having a strong science fiction vibe to them and it is great that Fum D’Estampa are bringing this and other books to a wider audience.

Three Favourite Stories
Free from War and Wave
I Don’t Understand Salmon
Love and Ashes

3.5 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

The Kamanga Kings, a Khartoum jazz band have been disbanded for a long time, and not all of the original seven members are still alive. One of those members was Rushdy’s late father, whose brother, Maher, also played in the band too. He was an old man now and he liked his routines, one of which was to check his mailbox each week. It was normally empty, until one day he received a letter from America.

It was from the John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts. The Kamanga Kings were being invited to travel to America and perform at the annual festival of world music. Rushdy’s uncle sighed at the news and said it would be impossible for them to go. Rushdy has other ideas though, he feels he is in a dead-end job and that having an opportunity to see another part of the world is too good a chance to miss.

He decides to have a go at reviving the band with the help of his slightly unreliable friend, Hisham and after persuading Alkanary, another original member they advertise for new members. They are inundated with potential musicians who have a wide range of musical skills, but they eventually manage to select a new line-up. A businessman offers to help fund them and act as their manager. They are on the way to America.

America is an alien place compared to Khartoum, full of bright lights and strange sights. After they get through the tough immigration, they make it to the hotel. In no time at all it is time to play the venue but before they can bask in the praise they realise that their manager has taken the money they are due and disappeared. Rather than feel sorry for themselves Rushdy wants to go after him, but before he knows it, all the band members want to come too. They escape from the hotel and before they know it they are wanted by the immigration authorities and the FBI…

It was about the music, about excavating a spirit had been buried for decades, something that we each had carried within us all these years as a longing.

This was an unsolicited copy that I was fortunate enough to receive from the publisher. I wasn’t sure if this was going to be my sort of thing at first, I don’t read that much fiction for one thing and when I do, this is not going to be very high on the list of books that I would have selected. That said, I actually enjoyed this. I thought it was a genuinely heartwarming tale that made me laugh as much as it did make me feel for the characters. Give it a go, you might like it!

2.5 out of 5 stars

Even though people spend an inordinate amount of time looking at our phones or other forms of screens at the moment, one of the things that we have learnt in the past few years is just how much we as a species are dependent on nature. In one form or other, it feeds, clothes and shelters us. Everything is utterly interlinked too, so as we change one thing, we inadvertently affect numerous other things.

The other thing that the natural world can do though, is to heal us. Time spent near rivers and trees has all sorts of benefits for our mental and physical health. This is not just speculation, but scientific evidence has demonstrated this in many different studies.

For some people reconnecting with nature is not always easy, sometimes this is an access thing nut there are often other reasons behind this. In Grounded, Ruth Allen is here to help those who want to reconnect to the natural world in eight separate stages. Beginning with Presence, each of the chapters has simple explanations as to what she is trying to get you to do, along with clear steps to bring you closer to nature.

I thought that it was written in a very clear and straightforward way and it is a beautifully presented book with some stunning images and what feels like a lot of space around the prose. A lot of what Allen writes here makes sense, and it picks up on similar themes that I have read in other books, such as Forest Therapy by Sarah Ivens. However, I didn’t think that this book was really for me; I found it had too much mindfulness for my liking.

4.5 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

Commuting by train is no fun, I did it for a little while before a friend got a car and then we could get where we wanted and when. I always regret never taking the time when younger to go interrailing, sadly circumstances never allowed me the time to do that. Until recently it is something that had never crossed my mind to do, but reading this book has made me think that it could still be possible.

Slow Trains Around Spain is a fairly self-explanatory title, and in this book, Tom Chesshyre wants to discover a Spain that most people never come across when they visit that country. But first, he has to get there, and rather than fly, he arrives at St Pancras to catch the Eurostar to Gard du Nord in Paris. He crosses Paris to catch the sleeper to Spain. It is an uneventful journey and he first glimpses the country after emerging from a long tunnel in the town of Figueres. There is sort of a plan, he wants to travel around the country taking the slowest trains possible between the provincial towns of Spain is a lazy and badly drawn S.

The sense of Spain being in some way cut off and removed is quite strong here. Yes, Spain is part of mainland Europe, but it feels quite apart too. You get that straight away after crossing the Pyrenees.

Each of the chapters takes us with him on the route that he followed around the country and this book is as much of a cultural tour as it is a geographic one. There are hundreds of mini-stories and vignettes in here about the people that he meets either on the train journeys or who he talks to in the places he stops at. Woven into this modern-day narrative are the histories of the places, from the tragedies of the country under Franco to the structures built by the Romans that are still standing 2000 years later and the Moorish influence that still resonates in the architecture of Southern Spain.

Spain by train seems to reward the lazy traveller – the more ad hoc you make it, the more you lose your way, the more the country unravels before you, revealing itself.

I thought that this was a wonderful book to read. He has a wonderful way with words and it goes to prove that you don’t need to travel to extreme places to have a wonderful journey and make memories. One gauge of a good travel book is, does it make me want to recreate a similar journey and discover that part of the world for myself and the answer, in this case, is yes. Very much worth reading.

4 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

There has been a lot of talk in the publishing world recently of underrepresented authors. If you haven’t been fortunate to go to the right universities or know the right people then getting the words you have written between the covers of a book can be an uphill struggle.

In this crowdfunded collection, Inkandescant has given thirty authors the opportunity for their voices to be heard. There are authors who bring lots of life experience to the page, working-class writers whose perspective is not heard often enough. They have also selected queer scribes and people of colour who all have stories to tell. Some of these have had their words published elsewhere and some are seeing their name for the first time in print in a book.

Ass with any collection that I read, I can’t say that I loved every story equally.  What everyone likes is deeply personal and I am the same. I did have three that I thought were outstanding though, The Birdwatchers, The Reluctant Bride and A Life That Isn’t Mine To See. What I would like to see though are these authors that have appeared for the first time have the chance to write longer pieces in other publishers as their voices are just as relevant as everyone else.

4 out of 5 stars

A copy of this was provided free of charge from the publisher in return for an honest review.

I always look for the red dot that is Mars in the sky when it is clear. It seems quite peaceful there, so why it ever became the God of War in the Roman Empire is a bit of a mystery to me. Even though it looks peaceful now it had an equally tumultuous beginning as Earth did during its formation.

There is a renewed interest in the planet too, there have been a number of probes sent on missions to the planet, some of which have been successful and sent back gigabytes of useful data and pictures; there have been others that have just become the latest crater on this lifeless planet…

It was formed 4.5 billion years ago, and how it came to be is the subject of many studies at the moment. Reading the Marscapes and geology is the remits of a few people, one of whom is Simon Morden, a planetary geologist. In this fascinating book, he will take us through the known stages of the planet and how it got to where it is today.

Some facts can be determined from the photos and data that have come back from the probes that are on the planet and he expands in some detail of each of the ages that it went through and explains the current theories and known facts. There are some points though where the evidence they have collected is not as clear cut and he takes time to explain each theory and the reason why scientists have reached their conclusions. These are things that can only be checked by getting evidence from those specific regions.

I thought this was a well-written book about our neighbouring planet by an expert planetary geologist with a knack for telling a story. Occasionally it felt like it was getting a bit technical, but thankfully it didn’t veer into the opaque world of academia too much. If you want to know about Mars and the unique and peculiar traits behind its creation then this is a very good place to start.

3 out of 5 stars

I don’t know what it is about islands, but there is something quite special about being on one. It is a fascination that Gavin Francis shares too, and he has been lucky enough to spend thirty years of his life travelling to some of the best islands on this planet, including the Andaman Islands, the Faroe Islands and even the Galapagos.

Most of these travels were because of his work as a doctor. But the book looks at lots of other writers experiences of islands as well as the use that islands have been put to over the years, for example for prisons, leper colonies and for pilgrimages.

This is a beautifully laid out book, full of wonderful maps of islands that Francis has been too, or he has lived on. It feels like a large print book as the text is a larger font and well-spaced. However, the maps are sometimes too small to read any detail from. The prose is well written, but it is a thin veneer of detail about his life travelling to these marvellous places. It is a shame really as it could have been so much better.